How to Make Your Own Cloth Wipes: Part 2

Once you have made your cloth wipes, what solution should you soak them in and how should you store and wash them?

There are many many recipes online that you can find by googling “cloth wipes solution.” Finding the right one for your baby’s bum can depend on many factors:

Is your baby’s skin very sensitive?
Do you like to measure or approximate?
Are you into all-natural essential oils? Or do you hate having to make a special trip to Whole Foods for stuff like that?
Do you have any ongoing rash issues?
And the list could go on…

Ultimately it just takes a little trial and error to find something that works for you and your baby. Here’s what I ended up doing for my son:

I didn’t want to take the trouble to measure! I just wanted to squirt a little of this and a little of that into a container, shake it up and go. I started by doing about 2 cups of water (I did measure the first time or two to get a feel for how much water that looked like) and then adding 1 squirt of baby oil and 2 squirts of baby shampoo. Mix up a bit, add wipes, squeeze out excess, put in container, done!

I ended up cutting out the baby shampoo because it made the wipes smell a little musty after a few days, in my opinion. Additionally, when we moved to tropical south Florida where mildew abounds, I started adding a few drops of tea tree oil (natural anti-funk agent) to make sure that nothing funky was growing in that dark, moist environment. It does the trick nicely!

So now my “recipe” is: Eyeball how many dry wipes are in my stack, run some water into my wipes container, 1 squirt baby oil, a few drops of tea tree oil, swirl with fingers, add wipes stack, squeeze out and pour off excess, lay wipes back in container and done!

One note about the baby oil – go easy on the amount because while it helps the wipe to glide over baby’s skin, you don’t want to put oily stuff into the same wash load as your diapers. The amount I use makes the wipes feel slightly softened but not oily to the touch. I’ve been using this method for over a year and have had no problems with the very small amount of baby oil I add to the solution.

There is no wrong way to make wipes solution! Try out a bunch of different things, tweak it to how you like it and then go from there! It’s so easy!

One last note on storing and washing:
I use an old Huggies wipes container to store my wipes, but you can also use whatever you want! Any plastic container will do – an old tupperware from your kitchen is fine! Some people also like to use a wipes warmer, but beware the funk because warm, dark and moist is a favorite habitat for heebie-jeebie growth.

To wash, just throw them in your diaper pail with all your other diapers, put them through your regular wash routine all together, and lay flat to dry. At least with flannel, laying flat is helpful. They can be kind of stiff if they dry all bunchy. Just depends on whether bunchy wipes bug you or not.

18 comments:

just curious – if you pre-wet your wipes in your container, is there really a need to let them dry after washing? i was low on wipes after doing diaper laundry tuesday, so i just folded the damp ones and wet them with solution.

I love my flannel cloth wipes! I use the same ingredients in mine, but I keep my "butt wash" solution in a spray bottle, and store my wipes dry. Then I just spray as much as I need on the dry wipe, and wipe away! That way I don't have to worry about that musty smell, or possible mold growing.

OK Can I ask a somewhat stupid question? I assume the wipes are all covered in poop. Do you then have to rinse the wipes too? Or do you just throw it in and let the washer rinse it off?I use liners so I don't have to rinse the diapers. Lazy.

my wipes solution is similar, but instead of baby oil (which contains a lot of weird stuff) i use 100% pure vitamin E oil. it helps with any skin irritation esp. if she ate a lil too many tomatoes. 🙂

basically my "system" is fill a trigger-spray squirt bottle with water leaving about an inch or two of space at the top. add like 3-4 drops of tea tree oil, and 1-2 drops of vitamin E oil. shake vigorously to mix it all up (usually takes me a minute to a minute and a half to make sure the vitamin E oil is mixed up real well because its so thick.) i store my wipes dry and just shake the solution real quick and spray each wipe 3-5 times (depends how sticky her poop happens to be) right before use. 🙂

Nice! My system is pretty simple. I cut 6×12" strips from old undershirts to use as liners and wipes. I keep them in a dry box by the sink and wet them before a change if I'm using one as a wipe. If we need solution, I have it in a spray bottle with the diaper supplies. We usually do changes in the bathroom since that's where the toilet and diapers are. Usually I don't have to rinse the diaper, just the cloth liner. It's good to do the whole process in the bathroom so my 27mo daughter gets the potty association, and the jersey knit lets her feel wet when she pees. I wash and dry them with the diapers, and they're plenty soft. Cotton/poly blend is great for wipes because it glides across the skin. Jersey knit doesn't require any edge binding and doesn't fray. Plus it was free!

Can I ask a question about using a wipes warmer? I have the prince lionheart warmer, but not the one for the cloth wipes… are they both the same? They seem identical. I wanted to try it and see. If I do not use one, do you keep the wipes dry and then squirt the solution or water ( I am planning on only using water because my kids have many allergies) on the wipes when going to be used? Sorry, never have used them before.

Thanks for this post! I am expecting my first in October and I have been wondering if the oil used in wipe solution can cause problems with diaper repelling. Now I know: go light on oil, and I should be fine! 🙂

I'm super lazy. I have a wipe spray that I ordered off KC and then a stack of baby wash cloths in with my clean diapers. I grab a wash cloth & wet it with warm water from the sink (if she's pooped, I usually change her in the utility room where I have the diaper pail so the sink is there) and just wipe, spray and re-diaper. I received doubles of the wash cloths and they work great because they're the perfect size and clean up baby well and easily wash.

Missy! I have often wondered the same thing to myself! "Why on earth am I drying these things when I just get them wet again anyway?" LOL

AKATHEMOM I do not rinse out my wipes. I have never had a problem but I do wipe away as much as possible with the diaper before I start with the wipes.

Yadira I do not use a wipes warmer so I cannot answer that question. Some people like to use a spray bottle and wet the wipe as they go and others, like myself, store enough wipes for 1-2 days wet in a container. Personal choice there.

To answer the rinsing question – if the first go with the wipe gets a lot of solids on it, I just gently shake that off into the diaper. I haven't had any issues with the regular amount of wiped poo not washing out without a rinse. If there's any discoloration left over, sunshine does the trick as always!

And as to drying – It's just because I'm lazy and don't make up new solution every time I have clean wipes. 🙂 I procrastinate until the whole stack is gone and then make a big batch at once.

I JUST started using cloth wipes a after this was came out. I had made some awhile back but just never got around to using them exclusively. I put them in an empty huggies container & they pop right up. So much easier than getting rid of the disposable ones, especially when you're out and about!